Film Festival’s opener explores musical connection between New Orleans and Havana

By Jeanne D’Arcy, Uptown Messenger
The 2023 New Orleans Film Festival will open with a screening of Música! It follows student musicians from Cuba on a musical exchange that includes Preservation Hall in New Orleans. The first screening takes place at the Prytania Theatre Uptown on Thursday (Nov. 2) at 7:30 p.m.
Film goers have another opportunity to see the Música! by Academy Award winning filmmakers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice, Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade History of Popular Music) at the Prytania Theatre at Canal Place 2, on Monday, Nov. 6, at 12:30 p.m.
Viewers meet three young musicians and watch their lives over five years – at school, with their families, performing around town, and on a musical exchange to Preservation Hall in New Orleans.

New Orleans Film Festival comes to the Prytania

By Jeanne D’Arcy, Uptown Messenger

The 34th New Orleans Film Festival will screen films at the Prytania Theater Uptown presenting a wide variety of films, most of which cannot be seen any other way. NOFF opens on Nov. 2 and closes Nov. 7. The festival will showcase films at four venues, including the Prytania Theater Uptown, 5339 Prytania Street.

Two teens arrested in Jason Williams carjacking

Police arrested an 18-year-old and 16-year-old in two armed carjackings that occurred Oct. 16, including the carjacking of District Attorney Jason Williams and his mother. See photos from NOLA Project below showing the SWAT team’s capture of the suspects. Ahmad Seals, 18, and a male juvenile are suspects in the ongoing investigation of the carjackings committed within a 20-minute period in the Lower Garden District and Central City. Williams was helping his mother, 78, into his Lincoln Navigator in the 1000 block of Race Street when two men approached and demanded the vehicle at gunpoint.

Roadwork ahead: Partial street closure at Fontainebleau and Lowerline begins Monday

The eastbound travel lanes of Fontainebleau Drive will be partially closed to vehicular traffic to complete asphalt paving at the intersection of Fontainebleau Drive and Lowerline Street, the Department of Public Works announced Friday. The closure will begin Monday (Oct. 23) at 7 a.m. Vehicular traffic and sidewalks are expected to reopen at 4 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 31, weather permitting. For river-bound traffic, drivers will be able to use South Carrollton Avenue and take South Claiborne Avenue to Broadway Street to get back onto Fontainebleau Drive.

Ghoul’s paradise on St. Charles Avenue is to die for

By Jeanne D’Arcy, Uptown Messenger

Once again, the queen of ghostly puns has pulled off a Halloween extravaganza on St. Charles Avenue. Crowds gather and a line of cars slows down to see the Skeleton House at 6000 St. Charles Ave., the creation of homeowner Louellen Berger. 

The skeleton krewe is an established fixture on the New Orleans’ Halloween scene. There’s local satire, like the “Scourge and Water Board” on an orange cone in the street, and the “Corpse of Engineers.” New this year are the “Pearly Gates,” Berger’s own front gate draped in long pearls, better known as Mardi Gras beads. 

In the front yard – and spilling over onto the sidewalk and up into the trees — are more than 100 skeletons wearing costumes with wonderfully punny labels.

Volunteers to beautify neighborhoods and meet their neighbors on Cleanup Day

The first Saturday in November (Nov. 4) is Cleanup Day across Uptown neighborhoods in Council District B.

The District B Cleanup Day, organized by Councilwoman Lesli Harris’ office, will be held from 9 a.m. to noon. Its success depends on volunteer efforts by neighborhood residents. According to the District B office, Cleanup Day as part of an ongoing effort to improve the quality of life and public safety for District B residents and businesses. Fourteeb neighborhood groups across the Uptown will serve as hosts, each with a designated meeting point (listed below) and a walking route where volunteers will collect trash and improve public areas.

Dew Drop Inn set to reopen before year’s end

The Dew Drop Inn is set to reopen in winter 2023, the developers announced Thursday (Oct. 19) in a press release. The distinctly New Orleans landmark in Central City has been restored to its former glory as one of the country’s most culturally significant music venues. 

Once known as “the South’s swankiest spot,” the Dew Drop Inn’s current revival is led by real estate developer and New Orleans native Curtis Doucette Jr., whose passion for historical Black culture and music led him to acquire the Dew Drop in 2021 and spend three years restoring the beloved site, reimagining it as a destination that blends a legendary music venue, 17-room boutique hotel, restaurant and pool club. 

From the late 1930s until the late 1960s, the Dew Drop Inn hosted some of the most iconic musicians of our time, including legendary artists like Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, Ray Charles, Little Richard, Tina Turner and Etta James, as well as local legends like Allen Toussaint and Irma Thomas, among many others. The venue served as an incubator for the birth of rhythm & blues and rock ’n’ roll. More than just a music venue, the Dew Drop Inn was a place where artists not only played but hung out, recorded and sometimes lived.

Calliope Beer Works on Oak preparing to pour its own brews

By Jeanne D’Arcy, Uptown Messenger

There’s a new restaurant — and soon a new craft brewery — on Oak Street. Calliope Beer Works took over the space vacated by Cowbell, where Oak Street meets the river levee, in August. Calliope’s premiere brews are fermenting, and the first four craft beers are expected to be on tap the first weekend in November. Calliope Beer Works is the brainchild of brew master Richard “Rich” Szydlo, who re-located to New Orleans from Chicago. “I have been brewing beer, and before I moved here, I sold my own products but I never had my own brewery,” Szydlo said. 

That next step for Szydlo is Calliope Beer Works, at 8801 Oak Street.